Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them.
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Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
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I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.
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Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.
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We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts.
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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
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It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake.
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When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.
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Is there really anyone, besides Rudy Giuliani, who prefers the new Times Square?
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There are a lot of things that we crave, there are a lot of things that would make us perhaps more fulfilled in a sensory way that we just say no to.
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I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God'... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question.
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We shouldn't be intimidated by someone else's idea of perfection if it will prevent us from taking steps we actively want to take.
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Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look?
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Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
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I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.
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I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.
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Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.